Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

Several international artists are taking part in a séance in an attempt to establish contact with Lord Byron - both as he was in his lifetime, and as he might be today - at Newstead Abbey, his ancestral home. In association with Nottingham Contemporary and intended as "an amorous seance, like an attempted seduction", the artists (photographed in the grounds of the abbey, below) will each offer Byron an object that might have been precious to him in his lifetime, as if to try to find a way to his heart. Many are playful and affectionately irreverent, as Byron was so often himself.

Byron was the prototype of the modern-day celebrity: magnetic, scandalous, ambiguous, mysterious, rebellious, brave, beautiful, brilliant, and destructive. He was described as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" by Lady Caroline Lamb, his famously besotted aristocratic lover, who wrote it almost as soon as she first saw him.

Byron was said to have had an extraordinary ability to empathise instantly with strangers. Perhaps this is ultimately what convinced the artists that their occult advances would be welcomed.

His astonishing physical beauty was allied to a blazing sexual charisma - something directors have attempted to replicate when they cast 21st-century heartthrobs Jonny Lee Miller (below left) and Matthew Rhys (below right) in biographical movies.

Byron amassed exotic animals wherever he lived, including peacocks, a badger, monkeys, an Egyptian crane, and he kept a bear at university. He carefully manipulated his own image: in contrast to the plainer portraits he had painted for friends or family, those for public consumption were almost always heroically – sometimes Orientally - attired. He was a fashion icon, who pioneered the Romantic costume of open necked shirt and carelessly flung cloak, and he certainly loved a man in uniform, ordering extravagant martial outfits for war zones, including the fanciful Greek helmet now at Newstead.

On the evening of the show's launch, self-proclaimed dandy Sebastian Horsley, handsomely attired in top hat and red waistcoat, enthralled the audience with his heroic philosophy of the dandy as the self-made symbol of rebellion.

In keeping with the idea of the idea of Byron as a prototype Romantic celebrity, artist Claire Chaumont has created a hilarious Glenda Slagg-style transcript of an "interview" with Lord Byron, billed as an "Exclusive - Byron speaks! His first interview for 186 years". Read it here.

In response to the show, Nottinghamshire-based artist collective Hinterland Projects re-enacted his funeral procession on August 31st, filling Nottingham's Streets to see Lord Byron lying in state in a local pub. Full Byronic mourning garb (black velvet and lace finery) was encouraged, although not essential.

That Beautiful Pale Face is My Fate
Newstead Abbey, Notts.
26th July - 7th September 2008